Abstract
Sea bream (Sparus aurata) production plays a significant part in Italian aquaculture, contributing to almost 18% of national pisciculture sales revenue. In recent years, Italian firms faced higher competition from countries with lower production costs. This prompted responses toward both cost reduction and product differentiation. The objective of this study was to investigate the preferences of Italian consumers for sea bream from fish farms, with a focus on aspects of product differentiation as gleaned from the analysis of the market situation: price, product origin, type and place of fish farming, and, in particular, type of feed. Data were collected with a consumers’ survey using personal interviews conducted on a questionnaire that included a choice experiment. Consumer preferences were analyzed with choice models based on stated preference data. The models made it possible to evaluate the potential of products with different combinations of attributes for which there is currently no market information available. In particular, the country of origin emerged as an important element of consumer choice, and to a lesser degree, organic certification and fish farming in marine cages also play a relevant role and may command a price premium.
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Notes
At the time of writing, sea bream production according to organic principles in Italy were still certified by private entities.
Eigenvalues indicates the amount of variance associated with the factor. If standardized each original variable has variance 1 thus a rule of thumb is to retain only those factors with eigenvalues larger than one.
In a preliminary stage of the research salient attributes were also investigated in a focus group with consumers aimed at eliciting the main dimensions attached to the consumption of farmed fish.
We inserted alternative-specific constant because they were significantly different from zero and improved model fit. A bias against the third alternative was indeed observed.
The number of factors was chosen with the criterion of the eigenvalue greater than or equal to 1. Single loadings larger than 0.5 were retained to interpret the factors.
We also considered the extraction of a fourth factor. However, the additional factor was strongly correlated only with the unwillingness to pay a pollution tax which no longer loaded on the second factor. We maintained the previous factor extraction because the three factors are to some extent sensibly interpretable.
The attribute non attendance model shows a value of 2.08 for the Aikake Information Criterion slightly better than the one obtained for the mixed logit model (2.10).
Derivation of welfare estimates for attributes such as vegetable feed with insignificant utility coefficients is uninformative.
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Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Italian Ministry of University through the FISR, Special Integrated Fund for Research, Food Quality and Well being, project n. 176 “Innovative model for integrated management of mariculture plants for food safety and quality and environmental quality” (ALLITTIMA).
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Stefani, G., Scarpa, R. & Cavicchi, A. Exploring consumer’s preferences for farmed sea bream. Aquacult Int 20, 673–691 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10499-011-9495-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10499-011-9495-z